Enough Time
by bkwrmgrl87
Summary: The day after the Final Battle Harry and Ginny talk about the year apart and find that though the space between them was stretched far and wide, they were never that far away in thought.


Disclaimer: Whilst writing this story, it never occurred to me that I was to be paid for writing this story or getting a HUGE fan base, so if that's not disclaimer enough try looking somewhere else then!

When Harry first woke up it took him a few minutes to remember how and why he was laying in his Gryffindor four-poster bed at Hogwarts. Then the pervious night's battle replayed in his mind. He quickly shut off the mental images that started to bombard in his head. After regaining control over his beating heart, he then sat up in bed and decided to get ready for the day.

The first thing that Harry did was get up and have a much-needed shower. After the rejuvenating shower, his thought process became much sharper and clearer.

Automatically, Harry's head turned to look at Ron's empty bed beside his own. He was surprised to find that it was a made bed. That piqued his interest. Where had Ron gone and where had he slept during the night before if not in his own bed?

He thought back to the might before. After leaving Dumbledore's office, Ron and Hermione followed Harry to the common room, hand in hand. When they arrived there, Harry called for Kreacher and asked him to supply them with food that was within easy access and to send it to them directly. After Harry had had his fill, he'd told Ron and Hermione that he would be heading up stairs for the night. Harry remembered that Ron had vaguely said something about talking with Hermione for a few more minutes, but would be right up.

As Harry made his way downstairs and into the common room, he glanced toward the couch next to the fireplace and was pleasantly unsurprised to see Ron and Hermione curled up innocently together there. Harry suspected that they had accidentally fallen asleep after they had talked the previous night.

But he was surprised to spot a tangle of long red hair peeking out from over the edge of his favourite chair placed next to the fireplace. After a moment the red head in question started to move and Harry smoothly walked over to the chair and picked up the hand that was dangling from off the edge of the chair and lightly squeezed it.

Ginny's whole body started in surprise and her head shot up from among the curtain of brilliant copper hair. The bright brown eyes met glittering green in an instant. The gaze was steady and unwavering, but then broke when Harry looked away and Ginny spoke quietly first.

"Is it really you, Harry? Or am I still sleeping?"

Harry looked back to her face and then onto their linked hands, he squeezed her hand gently and then kissed her softly for a few seconds.

"Does that answer your question, Ginny?" he whispered back, not wanting to wake his two best friends that were still sleeping in the room. Ginny nodded her head mutely but then said. "Yes, but.." her voice trailed off.

"But?" Harry prompted.

"Could we talk somewhere a bit more private?" she said tilting her head toward the couch, not five feet away.

"Where's you cloak?"

"What?" Ginny was jolted again, that was not what she had been expecting.

"Your cloak, where is it? I've got an idea,"

"It's somewhere near the Room of Requirements, I took it off during the battle so I won't be encumbered by its bulk." she answered a little bemused.

"I'll summon it, shall I?" he asked and was given a nod in agreement and then he raised his wand and wordlessly summoned her cloak.

A few minutes later the portrait hole opened enough to admit the article in question and it soared gracefully in his outstretched hand.

"Put it on, I'll be down in a minute. I just need to grab a few things and then we'll go and talk."

As Ginny was in the process of pulling on her trainers and cloak, Harry quietly dashed upstairs and seized his own cloak, the Invisibility Cloak, and the Marauder's Map.

As Harry walked over to Ginny while pulling on his cloak he murmured, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," and lightly tapped the map with his wand.

As he was in the course of seeing if the route that lead outside was free in order to have their way unblocked by well-wishers and mourners alike. He saw many people flitting around from bed to bed in the Hospital Wing. He saw some people trying to attempt to fix the side of the castle wall that was blown apart, and Harry realized with an uncomfortable lurch that the majority of the people were congregated in the Great Hall. Harry noticed that a Molly Weasley was next to another dot labeled Fred Weasley.

Harry's hands started to shake, but then a warmer much smaller hand took the map and folded it up and placed it into her pocket. She then wrapped the Invisibility Cloak around both of them and grabbed Harry's hand and held it in hers.

Harry tightened his grip slightly and then tugged on her hand toward the exit and silently, not trusting his voice, guided Ginny to their special spot by the lake outside on the Hogwarts grounds. He let go of Ginny's supportive hand only to cast several privacy charms around them and a drying charm on the grass so that they could sit comfortably, and then reclaimed her hand after he was done.

They were both, for the moment, content to sit in silence looking across the lake and watch as the sun peeked from behind the castle.

"Did you know that we are sitting in the exact same spot where I went to get away from everyone after we had come back from the ministry?" Harry asked Ginny.

"No, I didn't," she said thoughtfully looking around at the immediate area.

But then suddenly Ginny's expression turned pained and Harry's heart gave another twinge, but before he could speak, she asked.

"Will it always hurt? Will the pain never leave me? I feel like my insides will bleed to death, and then I find myself remembering that there will never be anything to make it better or to make the pain go away." she breathed in deeply and Harry's admiration for the girl in front of him rose because she had not burst into a puddle of tears, but stayed strong and focused. Although he did see her beautiful eyes fill with tears, they did not fall, but he answered her query anyways.

"No, the pain never leaves completely," he spoke hesitantly, thinking back to when he had visited Godric's Hollow. "But it does get easier to deal with when you move on, even if it's a hard thing to do. I'm sorry about Fred, and I'm sorry about causing you pain when you thought I had died when I had pretended to be dead in Hagrid's arms."

Harry paused to look at Ginny and saw that the tears had won the battle, as they slid mutely down her cheeks.

"But I'm not sorry," her head snapped up almost comically, but he ignored it and went on. "I'm not sorry that I tried to die for all those people I care for by doing everything in my power to try and stop the one person that took my family away from me and even some of my dearest friends. Though I didn't know it at the time, he also tried to take away the one person that is the central element to my happiness. The one person that holds the keys to what could eventually be my future family, one of my very own someday."

At the end of his statement, Ginny roughly encircled her arms around his neck and sobbed loudly onto his shoulder. Harry rubbed her back soothingly and breathed, "Do you know what?" Ginny's sobs were still too violent for speech, but she shook her head in response.

"Fred died to protect those _he_ loved and cared for, and we must in his memory, honor his sacrifice by keeping the good memories of him in the forefront of our minds and not feel guilty because we go on and live life happily. We can do this by not living in the past, but moving on to whatever the future has in store for us.

"After Sirius died, Luna told me that we would one day get to see all those that have died, and that this life isn't the end. I didn't know how right she was until I left to what I thought was going to be my ultimate death. I used the resurrection ring,"

Harry heard a stifled gasp and noticed for the first time that Ginny had extracted herself from him and had covertly snuggled up to his side, but he paused only for a minute to start running his fingers through her hair and then continued.

"And the ring raised up spirit imitations of that of my parents, Sirius, and Re.. Remus." his voice cracked when he'd said Remus's name but then hurriedly moved on. "And Luna _was_ right, I saw them, and now I know for a surety that I will get to see them again. Just not right now or any time soon."

Ginny sniffed and then said. "Thank you for telling me this Harry, it means a lot to me. Luna is such a special friend. I hope she'll one day find someone and be as happy as we are because we're together.

"This last year with not only you, but Ron and Hermione gone, it was the most horrible experience of my life. But, oh, I thought I was going to die from just the worry alone, and not to mention when I heard rumour that you had _broke_ into Gringotts and escaped on the back of a _dragon! _Not to mention all of the other stuff you've been doing this last year that I can only dream of.

"I missed you so much, you can't know how much I've missed you. Please tell me that you have missed me as much as I have missed you?" Ginny asked unsurely and Harry was taken aback, noticing that she looked as she did after he had rescued her from the Chamber of Secrets, upset and apprehensive of what lay ahead for her.

"No I didn't," he said shaking his head, and heard her take in a sharp breath but then at once finished his thought, "I missed you more."

Then he kissed her again, not like the tender one in the common room, no a kiss that he tried to put all the feelings he'd had felt the year that they'd had to be separated. The yearning for her, the sadness of being apart, and the joy at seeing her safe and relatively unharmed.

Ginny kissed him back with the same fervor. The pain of never knowing whether Harry was safe or not, the huge abandon when she was forced, for her safety, to stay at her Auntie Muriel's, and the elation of the feeling of Harry's fingers threaded in her hair as he kissed her.

When they broke apart Harry asked her, "Do you want to know what my last thoughts were? Right before Tom shot the Avada Kadavra curse at me?"

"Yes, please." came the hesitant reply.

"It was you. You were my last thought. I was remembering our first kiss and how it felt to have your lips on mine." he said.

He kissed her again, but without the blind passion, just a firm but chaste kiss, one that he would later recall even when the years had flown by like a soaring Hippogriff.

"I've never said this out loud to anyone before, but Ginny, I love you. You are my life, and I don't know what my life would have been like if I hadn't had you here. Not only to show me love, but here to straighten me out and knock some sense into me when I'm being thick."

"And don't you forget it, either," Ginny bantered back but her voice subtly had a more serious tone in it. "I love you too, Harry Potter. I have since I was ten when I saw you at the station for the first time. Even when I had half convinced myself during third that I had gotten over you and had started dating Michael I still felt like there was a part of me that was hollow or a part of me was missing. But being with you… It's changed me and now I feel completely whole, like a piece of me that had been broken is finally healed."

Ginny abruptly changed topics that it sent Harry's head spinning. But after a few seconds he was able to process the line of questions and was glad that their time together and friendly banter was still as good as ever.

"So when did Ron and Hermione become the newest couple? I'm sure Romilda Vane will be _so_ upset to hear about _that_ relationship finally making its appearance." Ginny quipped with a laugh.

Harry let out a loud laugh, realizing that it had been his first real laugh for what felt like ages.

"Oh yes, Romilda will be so disappointed," he snickered and then said, "It was right after I asked you to leave the Room of Requirements and you at had left to fight deranged Death Eaters, which by the way I'm still cross at you for not coming back like you were supposed to." he said irritably.

"Don't you lecture me about fight deranged Death Eaters, Harry James Potter! It's not like _you _ haven't been doing a lot of that lately either. It doesn't matter anymore any way. Tell me how it happened already! I'm waiting, in fact I've been waiting for this to happen for years." said an impatient Ginny.

"Okay, Okay. Ron had said something about someone being missing and Hermione asked who, and then he mentioned the house-elves, and I asked if he meant that we should ask them to help us fight, but he clarified that we shouldn't ask them because then we would probably have more Dobbies on our hands." He looked away and on to the castle and was astonished to find that the sun had long since risen and it looked to be about mid- morning without either of them observing it.

Ginny prompting him this time. "What happened then?"

"All of a sudden she dropped everything down onto the floor that she had been carrying at the time and ran at Ron and kissed him full on the mouth without a second thought!" Harry grinned widely but then looked down at his watch. "Er, I didn't realize it was _quite_ this late. Are you hungry? Do you want to go back up to the castle and eat something before someone thinks that we've been kidnapped or something?"

"Yes, that sounds like a brilliant idea. And don't think I've forgotten about that promise you made to me." said Ginny slyly.

"What promise?" Harry asked warily, noticing the mischievous look on her pretty face and not liking it one bit.

"Oh, the one about all the future children we'll be having together,"

"Wh.. What?" gasped Harry, he quickly thought back and couldn't remember EVER saying anything of the sort out loud, especially considering what had transpired up in the castle not 12 hours earlier.

"You'll just have to catch me first, if you want to know what I'm talking about. Won't you?" she laughed at Harry's shocked expression and then ran full-tilt back up to the castle.

It took Harry a few seconds to try and process all that had come out into the open, but then decided he didn't really care that much. So he quickened his steps and ran toward his first real home and to what he someday hoped would be his future family. Hopefully a real family, both figuratively and literally.

Fin


End file.
